I might take a look again in June, especially if Storm Legion (which I never played) is part of the f2p experience. I liked Rift for a while, just not enough to keep on subbing.
Apparently everything is available in the f2p version and nothing will be removed from the game including inventory and character slots for anyone who has ever subscribed which is a bonus! I think the sub ended up causing a number of players to give up playing.
Rift is worth revisiting if it becomes free to play, and none of that crap restrictions like the SWTOR f2p model.
maybe, but also because I am sure these guys have just made another game and that model is totally F2P ... so they are making RIFT F2P coz the business model makes more sense that if they can do it for one, they can do it for the other... paraphrasing off some article I read. Pxs
Do any Toggers play Rift? I used to play quite a while ago and liked the game just could never find a good group of people to play the game with. I enjoyed the pvp actually. I am by no means a skilled pvper but it was fun and reasonably well balanced.
For any fellow Aussie (or Melbourne) Toggers... I just picked up a copy of Rift Storm Legion for only $9 in EBgames today. Was going to give it a go once it went F2P, so it was good timing.
Its a good game, and f2p means you would be silly not to at least check it out. Alot of similarities with wow as you would expect (from any newish mmo) but there is more than enough to distinguish it. Laethys is the "Oceanic" shard, and its pretty well populated most of the time. Imagine it will be pretty packed when f2p first starts up.
Rift PvP is fairly well balanced and player population is good, queues for warfronts pop in a few minutes (im on Laethys. +10 GMT). Conquest generally has 3x full raids, during US prime time it fills completely with 120 players. You will find most players are grinding their way to Rank 80 since the xpac so i'm not to sure about lower level PvP. Having said that i looked around the lower level and starting areas of Rift these last few days and the influx of players has already started. Rift was worth the sub for mine, so its even better now as F2P.
If anyone reading this plays EU hours, there's a thread for Rift Icewatch EU shard over here. http://www.theoldergamers.com/forum/mmo-tavern/492077-rift-eu-icewatch.html The guild is smalll right now, but hopefully the f2p change will bring more people in.
Depends a lot on your class. When I played it was the most imbalanced I had seen in an MMO, but they may have made some improvements. Classes with self-healing were much more powerful than those without. There was a lot of CC. Ranged classes ruled. Some healing builds were so strong it would take an army to kill a healer. It all might have changed in the last year or more. I was a big Rift fan, but found the class balance unpalatable.
I wonder if it's still on sale in shop (it shows as full price on EB web site). The FTP version will include Storm Legion areas but you only get the 4 new Storm Legion souls to play if you own the expansion. JB hifi online has it at $30.99 for the boxed version and thats the cheapest I can find in Australia, all cd key stores are sold out and Steam and Trion are charging full amount. I'll check in store tomorrow if EB has it in stock and post here in case anyone is interested.
You may be able to get SL for free if you've got the time. Raptr are currently offering the game+expansion+30 days sub. Basically you need to play with Raptr running in the background until you play enough hours to reach the reward level. If you run out of characters to level to 20 under the current f2p trial restrictions, you could always start up a new character on a different shard, then transfer them back once you get the reward. There are a couple of rewards that don't take as long to get but they're just silly cosmetic items that you can't equip anyway as a trial player. If I was in Australia I'd go for the EB deal though: I just haven't seen an offer as good in the UK. Editing this to add that you only get the sub if it is a new account - previous Rift owners like me get a free copy of SL and no extra game time. So the main benefit you'll get is access to the newer souls. Didn't read the small print!
Hope you do get it at that price in the physical EBgames shop. I think the original Rift box was selling at $4 but I already had that in digital CE from before. Even the salesperson was shocked at the $9 price stickered on the box I bought. I was going to buy the digital version of SL when I logged back into my Trion account, glad I decided to check the shops first.
With the raptr promotion, you don't even have to play the game to get enough hours to get the free SL + 30 days etc. All you need to do is load up raptor and have rift installed. Then start the right client and get to the character selection screen. Alt Tab out and do something else for a day or so (or just let it run overnight) and Raptr will allocate you the time played when you exit the client. Test it first though to make sure that Raptr has picked it up. It basically just counts how long you have the game loaded, rather than actual playtime.
Thanks for the info on Raptr guys, EB in Blackburn (Melbourne) have it at $9 with 2 copies left so I'm heading out now to pick it up.
Yeh you can download it now and play to level 20 but unless you have registered a Storm Legion key with Trion you won't have access to the extra souls and I think they'll sell them in their transaction shop for more than $9 (I have no confirmation on this). If you intend to play but can't get a cheap key for Storm Legion then Raptr is the best deal for the extra souls.
Pretty sure that Reven is correct, the F2P version doesn't include the souls from SL and after having tried a couple out, these are definitely a lot of fun! So for $9, or a raptr promotion, you should follow through and get it before the 12th.
